Re: Silly question: Where's eth0?

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 22:27:02 -0400
"Douglas A. Tutty" <dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:

> 1.
> 	Looking in
> 	/usr/share/doc/linux-doc-2.6.18/Documentation/networking/ \
> 	bcm43xx.txt.gz it says its for Broadcom BCM43xx chips.
> 
> 	It mentions needing a firmware file.  I'm assuming this is some
> 	wireless stuff that I know diddly about.  

Some hardware requires software to be loaded by the driver onto the
chip; that software is sometimes called (perhaps technically
inaccurately, as John Hasler has maintained) firmware.  This has
nothing to do with wireless per se, but it is often the case with
wireless chipsets.

> 
> 	To me, either a driver works or it doesn't.  
> 
> 2.
> 	aptitude search ~dbroadcom
> 	shows up bcm43xx-fwcutter
> 
> 3.	Both places refer the reader to http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/
> 
> 4.	It says that the page won't be updated anymore, to go to
> 	http://linuxwireless.org
> 
> 	Which doesn't seem to help any.
> 
> 
> Since I don't have a wireless card, there's no reason for me to install
> bcm43xx-fwcutter.
> 
> It seems that the linux driver for your card requires that you steal the
> firmware from another driver and stick it into the linux driver.  Good
> luck with that.

That's exactly it, all though I don't think it is really "steal"ing.
It is also often fairly trivial; it may "just work".  Debconf will
offer to do it automatically, and it worked correctly for me.

> Now, if you actually had a piece of hardware that _was_ fully supported
> by the linux kernel without this mess, then you would get a functioning
> eth0 which would then work just fine with the standard Debian networking
> tools.  
> 
> In short, your problem isn't with the networking tools, its with a
> non-functional driver.

Again, it's not the driver which is non-functional, but the hardware
which needs its own firmware, independent of the driver, although the
driver is responsible for loading it, IIUC.

> Doug.

Celejar
--
mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email
ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator